Where to begin with Matías Piñeiro

“All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players” – Shakespeare’s oft-quoted opening to As You Like It is the perfect introduction to Argentine filmmaker Matías Piñeiro’s intertextual explorations of artifice, identity and performance. In just 15 years Piñeiro has built an interlinked and enigmatic body of work that marks him out as one of contemporary cinema’s most inventive filmmakers.

Often compared to the French New Wave filmmakers Eric Rohmer and Jacques Rivette, Piñeiro’s commitment to exploring the intersections of art and daily life via short, sharp variations on both the comedies of William Shakespeare and the essays of 19th-century Argentine writer and president Domingo Sarmiento have been a highlight of major festivals like Berlin and Locarno for much of the past decade.

Although the dense literary and theatrical roots at the heart of his work may initially seem off-putting to the uninitiated, it’s important to note that Piñeiro’s films are anything but dry, as he continually eschews traditional adaptation for something decidedly more playful and meta. While his films are unlike anything else in contemporary cinema, there’s a traceable lineage to both New Argentine Cinema and pioneering Argentine filmmakers such as Hugo Santiago in both his formal inventiveness and self-sustaining methods of production.

Despite both his continued explorations of Shakespeare and being a mainstay on the festival circuit, Piñeiro’s work remains relatively under-seen in the UK. However, with the first UK retrospective of his work taking place in November 2022, there has never been a better time to familiarise yourself with the work of this singular filmmaker. 

Piñeiro’s debut feature, El hombre robado (2007), is a captivating tale of intersecting romances and complicated friendships in Buenos Aires. It follows museum tour guide Mercedes (played with effortless guile by María Villar) as she ricochets around the city interacting with lovers, friends and casual acquaintances. 

Drawing inspiration from Sarmiento’s 1845 magnum opus Facundo, a key Latin American literary work exploring the contrasts of civilisation and barbarism, Piñeiro teasingly interweaves the literary and the performative, crafting a rich and inventive exploration of the games we play in the name of love and truth. Deceptively straightforward, Piñeiro’s compelling portrait of impetuous youth is a perfect introduction to the thematic concerns and formal invention that characterise his work, while also hinting at the experimentations with time and structure to come.

The film marked the fruitful beginning of what has become long-term collaborations between both Piñeiro and his cinematographer Fernando Lockett, and Piñeiro and a band of actors that emerged from Buenos Aires’ off-off Broadway theatre scene. The familiar faces of María Villar and Romina Paula have recurred in Piñeiro’s work since this first collaboration, their continued presence enriching the explorations of performance at the heart of his cinema. 

Since 2010, each of Piñeiro’s films have formed a part of a larger project exploring the female characters in Shakespeare’s comedies, entitled Las Shakesperiadas (or Shakespeare-reads). Each of these films is connected by this Shakespearean bond, but there is no right or wrong order in which to watch.

Viola (2012) revolves around a group of actresses who, while performing in a production of several of Shakespeare’s plays, become engaged in a seductive game of love and its follies. Blending melodrama and comedy, and clocking in at a breezy 65 minutes, Piñeiro’s third feature unfurls with a delightful musicality that imbues this tale of the mysteries and realities of love with an atmosphere of lightness and grace. You could pair it with the languid eroticism and unmoored desire of The Princess of France (2014), which follows a young man’s attempts to reconquer his old life upon returning to Buenos Aires to put on a radio play of Love’s Labour’s Lost. Piñeiro deftly blends liberating temporal digressions with intricately choreographed long takes to create a dazzlingly expressive exploration of intimacy.

For those intrigued by Viola’s flirtations with ellipses and its blurring of reality and dream, Piñeiro’s most recent feature Isabella (2020) is an elegant labyrinth of moments past and present as two women compete for the role of Isabella in a local production of Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure. With its plays within plays and films within films, it’s a mesmerising mise-en-abyme of artistic awakening enveloped in swathes of colour and imbued with a palpable melancholy. Follow up with the short film Sycorax (2021), an elusive free-form reworking of Shakespeare’s The Tempest made in collaboration with Galician filmmaker Lois Patiño – and keep an eye out for a fascinating link to Isabella.

If intriguing group dynamics are more your speed, then a double bill of ensembles may be in order. Todos mienten (2009) is an intricate chamber play filled with forged paintings, planned robberies and romantic intrigue, as a group of friends and artists find themselves engaged in an elaborate game of manipulation and deceit. Composed in a seductive roundelay of immaculately composed long takes, it’s an intoxicating cocktail that endlessly smudges the line between truth and fiction. Cue it up along with the first part of Piñeiro’s Las Shakesperiadas project, Rosalinda (2011), which saw Piñeiro transition from film to digital video. Drawing inspiration from Shakespeare’s As You Like It, it’s a sprightly exploration of artifice and identity set in the heart of the countryside.

Hermia & Helena (2016) is a complex collage of amorous detours that crosses hemispheres and languages as it follows the story of a theatre director as she travels from Buenos Aires to New York. While Piñeiro’s first foray into English-language filmmaking might seem an accessible place to start, its criss-crossing structure and restless formal experimentation represents a rather dense introduction to Piñeiro’s work. It’s better saved for when you have a good grasp of his style and concerns. 

Parallel Lives: The Cinema of Matías Piñeiro begins at the ICA on 25 November 2022.